DYK # 8: Did you know that VoC, in essence, is about data?

I was fortunate enough to attend the Tomorrow Expo in Auckland last week, as part of the New Zealand Techweek. The Tomorrow Expo showcases Aotearoa New Zealand start-up, scale-up and corporate tech exhibitors with keynotes and exclusive speakers determined to transform the digital year ahead. It’s all about technology, and it was nice to put my tech hat on again and think about tech and data for the day.

Why did I attend you may wonder?

I attended the event because VoC is all about tech and data.

VoC stands for Voice of Customer, and the term refers to incorporating our customers into business decision making. Oftentimes you would hear VoC referring to survey programs. Traditionally that’s been true, as surveys were the only way for us to get customer feedback.

Fast forward to 2023 and that’s no longer the case. Customer feedback is everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE.

In essence, customer feedback is data. While most solicited feedback such as surveys contains qualitative and qualitative feedback, most unsolicited feedback is unstructured in nature.

What’s all the jargon? 🤔

💡Solicited: solicited customer feedback refers to feedback that’s been received as the result of a specific request for information (e.g. a survey).

💡Unsolicited: unsolicited customer feedback refers to feedback that’s been provided without any action on your part, i.e. you didn’t specifically ask for it (e.g. social media posts).

💡Structured: structured customer feedback is data that has a standardized format for efficient access by software and humans alike. It is typically tabular with rows and columns that clearly define data attributes (e.g. survey results or metrics).

💡Unstructured: unstructured customer feedback is data that doesn’t fit into a standardized format and is not organized in a pre-defined manner. In the case of customer feedback, that’s call center logs, emails, chat conversations, etc.

What does that mean for VoC?

As we mature our VoC programs, we move to incorporate more unsolicited and unstructured data such as social media data, online reviews, contact center data (calls, email, complaints, etc.), etc. The conversation then slightly shifts from a research conversation on how best to script surveys, to a technology and data analytics conversation. Which other data sources can we leverage to “truly” understand the voice of our customers, and how can we best utilize this data.

Generating insights also changes. From analyzing research data to analyzing any type of data, combining those different data sources and making sense of it all. That’s where we’re heading with our VoC programs, and it’s incredibly exciting news.

It enables us to focus a bit more on “understanding” experiences, rather than “measuring” experiences.

The one thing that doesn’t change though, is the need to act on the insights we generate. Whether they’re based on research data alone, or a combination of different data sources. The quality of decisions we can make depends on the quality of insights we generate, which relies on the quality of data we collect and analyze in the first place.

While you still require processes and framework to enable your team to act on the insights you generate, by adding additional data sources to your wider VoC program, you improve the quality of insights you generate, and hence the quality of the actions you drive.

If that all sounds a bit confusing to you, don't hesitate to get in touch with us and we’ll help you make sense of it 🤓

#VoC #CX #customerexperience #data #technology #AI #datadrivenintelligence #CXtransformation #dataanalytics